The Doors - Songs From The Motion Picture When You’re Strange: A Film About The Doors

The hits re-contextualised within the movie

Despite his huge popularity as kiddie hero and swoon-inducing pin-up for women of all ages, Johnny Depp continues his between-blockbusters diving into rock’s iconography with gusto. His long-standing Keef fixation is now joined by reciting Jim Morrison’s (less familiar) poems throughout this collection of songs featured in the upcoming Doors movie, When You’re Strange, which Depp also narrates. When The Spirit Of Music segues into Moonlight Drive, the effect can’t help recalling 1978’s An American Prayer (when Jim did it himself); atmospheric and working a treat when bringing in an LA Woman or Riders On The Storm.

Both those, and other familiar career-straddling classics from the film, appear here in time-honoured original versions, though the set is also spiced up with the Ed Sullivan Show version of Light My Fire, Danish TV-recorded When The Music’s Over and Break On Through from the 1970 Isle Of Wight festival, plus sound-bites from the band themselves. Cutting through everything is a 1970 live version of Roadhouse Blues captured in New York, still causing the jaw to drop as the three musicians lock into that inimitable, deadly swing and Morrison lets fly. By all accounts, it’s a fantastic film, and this unashamed Doors-wallow serves it well.

4 stars 4 stars 4 stars 4 stars

Rhino | 081227981136

Reviewed by Kris Needs
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